Unbreak
by Anonymous033
Summary: "'I don't know…' she whispered hoarsely, 'how to deserve what you could give me anymore.'" Tag-ish to 10x21 "Berlin," taking place sometime months into the future. Angsty. Tiva; one-shot.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own NCIS. And I'm hungry. ... For actual food, I mean. Yes, that was random.

**Spoilers: **10x21 "Berlin," spoilers to the spoilers of the finale, uh, and ... there're references to 5x08 "Designated Target," 7x13 "Jet Lag," and 9x13 "A Desperate Man," though really, they're vague enough that you wouldn't even know they were references if you haven't watched the episodes :P

**So, I put them in** São Paulo, Brazil for this one :P there is a United States Naval Support Detachment there, according to Wikipedia. That said, it never gave the location and I can't find it on Google Maps, so I put them by the estuary (Estuário de Santos) and please don't shoot me if it's a really silly place to put a naval support detachment. I don't even know what that is. I'm silly, what can I say? It does not affect the story at all :P The story is, in fact, so much angst that you should really start questioning what _Berlin _did to my mind *smiles crookedly*. Uh, also, the ending is vague. Or, if you find it vague, it's meant to be that. If you don't find it vague ... it's also meant to be that. Right.

**And this was** written pre-_Revenge, _so I actually wouldn't take that into account while reading this; the characterization would be a little bit different.

**Enjoy!**

**-_Soph_**

* * *

**Unbreak**

She'd taken to looking very sad, he'd noticed.

At first, he'd thought the entire investigation into their conduct and whether or not they'd interfered personally in the federal pursuit of Ilan Bodnar had taken its toll on her, but a whole month after the investigation had been closed and they'd been dealt with nothing more than a severe slap to the wrist, he wasn't sure anymore.

She just looked sad.

Coming into work, she'd settle obediently at her desk and plough her way through her paperwork until Gibbs came into the bullpen and packed them all up to head to the next crime scene.

At the end of the day, she'd turn off her lamp, wish them a good night, and leave, neither offering nor accepting the offer of drinks at the nearest bar.

And he missed her, loathe as he did to admit it. If it was space that she needed, then he'd give her it, but he missed terribly the best friend who could both rag on him mercilessly and treat him with such an electrifyingly soft touch that his world would narrow down to himself, her, and the way she looked at him. Most of all, though—most of all, he missed the way they could feel so close, it was as if they'd moulded their two souls into one.

He hadn't really experienced enough of that before the horrible car crash took it all away.

Now that he thought about it, maybe it was said car crash that left this yawning chasm between them; this elephant in the form of the mangled ruins of a vehicle that left them utterly helpless to reconnect with each other. They'd been so close, a single step away from becoming _something—_but now it felt like they were only a single step away from becoming _nothing._

He hated it.

xoxo

Despite everything, though, fate always had a cruel way of dealing with them.

A case sent the team to São Paulo, Brazil (thankfully as themselves rather than undercover), and once more, Tony found that he was forced to share a room with Ziva.

"Left side or right?" he asked when they saw the bed, because no one questioned anymore what exactly it was that McGee did when it came to accommodations.

"Right," she answered, and the tremble in her bottom lip told him the part she hadn't spoken. _Whichever is different from Berlin._

He'd probably walked out of the room a little bit too quickly.

xoxo

Ziva wasn't to be found at dinner in the mess hall, nor was she _after _dinner when he lay on the bed trying to bore himself to sleep with mindless (and, to him, linguistically incomprehensible) TV, but she returned to the room while he was brushing his teeth.

"Where were you?" he asked through a mouthful of froth, and she told him she'd been taking a walk. He spat, rinsed, and joined her on the bed where she was shaking loose her hair. "You took a five-hour walk by the estuary? What the hell was there to see?"

"Ships," she answered casually.

He scoffed. "Yeah, because working in the Navy Yard daily means you don't usually see ships. C'mon, Ziva."

"I am not in the mood for your sarcasm, Tony," she replied, sinking into the pillow with her eyes raised towards him. He sighed and copied her motion.

"Can you sleep?" he asked quietly, and she looked away.

"I have not been able to sleep well since … the … crash."

Guilt twisted his heart. "You hadn't been sleeping well before that either, though."

"I know."

"That's an awfully long time to not be sleeping well."

"What is the saying, 'You made your own bed; now you have to lay in it'?"

"What do you mean?"

She blinked rapidly. "What if … we are destined to be a car wreck? Always travelling somewhere but never getting to the destination because we were never meant to be there?"

His breath caught, and he slowly propped himself on one elbow to look down at her. "Then we take a different mode of transportation," he suggested lightly, only to regret it when she shut her eyes.

"I have been so lonely," she confessed softly, and then she clenched her jaw.

"You're never alone. I told you that."

"I know you do not wish for me to be. But I am bad news for you, and you will never be safe as long as I am here."

"Is this what this is about? You drew away 'cause you thought you'd hurt me?"

"I _did _hurt you."

"I think it was an SUV that hurt me."

"Tony—"

"No, Zi, I'm not going to let you blame yourself. If anyone should be blamed, it should be me!"

"If I had not asked you to be there for me in the first—"

"You never _asked _me; I just did it."

The room was silent. Ziva's hand twitched as if about to reach out to him, but it didn't leave its spot.

"I keep thinking that if I had waited five minutes to talk to you," she mumbled, swallowing visibly, "we could be _something _right now."

"We could still be."

She shook her head vehemently. "I don't know how to be the woman I was before any longer."

"Learn," he barked, even though it sounded far less convicted than he could've been.

"I don't know…" she whispered hoarsely, "how to deserve what you could give me anymore."

_And there it was, _he thought as he breathed out sharply.

Somehow, her confusion had turned into both their losses.

xoxo

The first thing he woke up to the next morning was her eyes on his face.

There was something wistful in the way she was looking at him. A yearning, sort of. A longing. She reached out a hand as if to touch him—but then she drew back abruptly, rolled onto her other side, and got up with a curt, 'Good morning,' and the moment was lost.

Any faint hope he might've had left in the gentle illusiveness of the early morning sunlight was promptly obliterated.

xoxo

That evening, he joined her on her walk alongside the river.

It'd taken him ten whole minutes to find her after she disappeared while everyone was heading towards the mess hall, and during those ten minutes, he'd flown into a blind panic; it was not until he eventually spotted her familiar silhouette facing the dark waters that he took a calmer breath and acknowledged to himself that he might've overreacted a little.

A lot.

It wasn't as if he'd been consistently reassured of her permanence in his life these past few months, after all.

"Hey," he greeted her as he stepped up to her side, and she turned to give him a small smile. "Figured you'd be skipping dinner again."

"You are skipping dinner, too."

"Yeah, well, I need to talk to you."

"Tony, don't." She sounded dejected.

"_Why not?_" he questioned harshly. "We were so honest with each other before the crash. What changed?"

"A lot of things!" she snapped, throwing one hand up. "One of them is that I could very well be staring at thin air right now!"

"But you're not," he said firmly. "If you keep acting like that, though, you might be soon."

Her expression never wavered, but something flickered across her eyes. And just like that, Tony understood, he'd unintentionally brought her whole world crashing down upon her.

"You would leave," she concluded, her voice flat.

He swallowed and sighed. "I didn't mean that at all," he murmured lowly, apologetically. "But I still want … whatever we had before the crash. And I don't know how to do that if you're not there anymore."

"Why would you want what we had before the crash?" she asked. "If it led to another crash, would you still want it? Would it not be wiser to change course?"

"And what do you suggest we change to? Because right now, Ziva—right now, we're further apart than we were before … I don't know, _Paris._"

He could see her bite down hard on her lip.

"I just want us to still be friends, without worrying about … whatever it was that started in Berlin," she said, and her eyes were pleading him when she looked up. "Is that too much to ask?"

_Yes, _he wanted to say. _Yes, it's way too much. _Because he'd slept beside her and danced with her and held her hand, and there was absolutely no going back from that. There was simply no erasing the memory of being so close to her that he'd felt as if he could actually touch her heart.

But, of course, he couldn't say that. So, he merely shifted on his feet and said, "Tell me something, Ziva."

The look on her face told him she clearly thought he'd ask her what she'd wanted to say before the crash.

He persisted. "Are you happy?"

She blinked, apparently caught off-guard. "What?"

"Are you happy?" he repeated. "Right now, are you? Or even if we returned to where we were pre-Berlin, would you be happy?"

She opened and shut her mouth, gulping like a goldfish, and he knew she just didn't want to answer that.

"Are. You. Happy?" he pushed again. "_Will _you be happy? Will you go out there and find another partner, someone who could understand you better and make you happy and who'd be there for you above all else? Someone whom you knew how to _be _with? Will you promise me to do that?"

"No," she said roughly. "No. Okay? No! I won't—Stop that!"

"Because you're the only one I want to be with," he continued gently, and an almost inaudible cry escaped her. "And I'm not saying I'm necessarily that person for you, but we were _somewhere _before that crash, and I like to think I covered _some _of the criteria mentioned.

"And I'm not saying you couldn't find a better man, Ziva. A thousand men would lay themselves at your feet for you, and most of them would be a lot more outstanding than I am. But I'm the one who has to sit opposite you every day knowing that despite not … wanting … me any longer, you also won't be wanting to go out there and find another man who _would_ make you happy."

"Why should this knowledge concern you? It should be none of your business," she snapped, but the tears in her tone belied its sting.

And he rubbed his face, the words he couldn't find the courage to speak getting lost on their way up his throat. "Regardless of whether you think I should care or not, someone once told me to cherish you." He met her gaze. "I only have one of you, Ziva. I don't know how to not desperately want for you to be happy."

She averted her eyes, shuddering. "The last time we talked like this, we almost died," she whispered.

"But we didn't," he countered.

"My happiness is too high a price for you to pay."

"Never."

She remained silent, only an occasional sniffle breaking the quiet of the evening air.

"I would die for you, Ziva. That will never change," he said, lifting one shoulder and dropping it. "Maybe we're different now, and maybe not for the better—I don't know—but all I know is that I would do things the same way all over again if I had to. This … _thing … _between us hasn't changed a single bit for me. I want you. But—" he stopped and tried to keep his voice from wavering. "You say you've been lonely. I'm just saying I don't want you to be, that's all."

"I do not want to be."

"Then don't be."

It took her a long while to look up at him, but she finally did. "What if something goes wrong? With us?" she asked, her face tear-streaked and a hair's width from crumbling.

"Then we pick ourselves up and put ourselves back together, just like we've always done," he answered, his throat impossibly tight, and a clear drop of liquid rolled down her cheek.

"Okay," she said, pursing her lips. "Okay."

"'Okay'?"

She didn't clarify verbally, but instead reached out blindly for his hand. When she found it, she clung on, squeezing his fingers so very tightly that he wondered if she was afraid he would vanish right before her eyes. So, he stepped up to her and slung his free arm around her waist, pressing her body to his and kissing her temple.

"I'm always gonna be right here," he whispered, and he felt her body tremble and tremble as she sobbed into his shoulder.

xoxo

They didn't let go of each other's hands for a single moment on their way back to the quarters.

She still wasn't saying much to him, but he was okay with that, because it seemed she already looked less sad.

And that night, when she lay down close to him and fell asleep with a palm against his ever-fluttering heart, he knew they'd make it.

They'd pick themselves up and put themselves back together, just like they'd always done.


End file.
